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State Rep. Dan Burke may need every vote he can muster to hold off Aaron Ortiz, a 26-year-old challenger backed by Cook County Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garica in a Southwest Side turf battle that could mark the start of a serious threat to the Burke family political dynasty.

Rep. Dan Burke, 66-year-old brother of Chicago Ald. Ed Burke, is in danger of losing his seat in the Illinois House of Representatives to 26-year-old Aaron Ortiz, a high school counselor who is backed by Cook County Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia. (Chicago Tribune)

Rep. Dan Burke, 66-year-old brother of Chicago Ald. Ed Burke, is in danger of losing his seat in the Illinois House of Representatives to 26-year-old Aaron Ortiz, a high school counselor who is backed by Cook County Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia. (Chicago Tribune)

“It’s very exciting, and I can’t be more thankful for the situation I ended up in, especially with Ryan Pace running the show and really believing in me, this organization and the other guys we have,” Mitch Trubisky said in an exclusive sit-down interview with the Tribune.

In a matter of hours Tuesday night, the field of eight gubernatorial candidates will narrow to two. As six candidates leave the race, the survivors will be aware of another exodus count: 33,703. That’s the net total of residents Illinois lost in 2017, the fourth consecutive year this state has...

Sports

The Cubs likely will finalize their 25-man roster before their Cactus League finale on Sunday against the Kansas City Royals at Surprise. In addition to performance, there are a few procedural issues among the relievers for the team to consider. First, Eddie Butler is out of options and would be...

The ultimate underdog story is over, but this NCAA Tournament will always be remembered for the sweetest No. 16 in college basketball history. UMBC's brief, but historic run ended with a 50-43 loss to ninth seeded Kansas State on Sunday night. UMBC became the first 16 seed to beat a No. 1, destroying...

In an NCAA tournament of this-could-not-be-happening, this could not be happening. A heaving victory pile of Nevada Wolf Pack players formed Sunday evening in one corner of the floor. A smaller one formed near midcourt. Behind them, the coach of a team that led by 22 points with 11 minutes left...

Concealed beneath the cuffs of Allen Robinson’s navy pinstripe suit and white dress shirt were two bracelets. A green one on his right wrist and an orange one on his left. Souvenirs from his hospital stay last September when he had the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee surgically reconstructed....

Business

An Amazon advance team will hit Chicago later this week to visit some of the proposed locations for a new headquarters, a source familiar with the visit who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly said Friday.

Local toy retailers worry manufacturers could raise prices or shrink selection or that the absence of Toys R Us will make it that much easier for shoppers to shift toy purchases online. How big the impact will be depends on where the customers who shop at stores that are closing take their business.

Entertainment

Tribune reporters William Lee and Nina Metz have recapped the first season of Showtime’s “The Chi” through the finale. Here they talk with show creator Lena Waithe about her thoughts on the season and her plans for next season. Lena Waithe: Hi, how are you guys? William Lee: Hi Lena, we’re good,...

It was not a South by Southwest Music Festival for the diversity-averse. Its very existence served as an act of defiance aimed at those who would fence off America from the world. Female artists, artists of color, outsiders from every corner of the world — from Africa and Poland to Jordan and Russia...

John Goodman and Fred Armisen made surprise appearances in "Saturday Night Live's" cold open, along with host Bill Hader and "SNL" regular Alex Moffat as CNN's Anderson Cooper. The bit presented as a segment of CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360" skewered headlines of the week including President Donald...

It would be easy to regard the story of a doomed 1950s gay romance that is “Fellow Travelers” as a period piece. Except for one thing: The fear and paranoia created by the steady drumbeat of untruths and intrigues that marks Washington politics never goes away. That reality lends topical resonance...

Life & Style

Believe it or not, new research suggests that people hospitalized for a heart attack are more likely to survive when certain heart specialists are out of town. The study of more than 34,000 U.S. heart attack patients found survival rates were higher when interventional cardiologists were attending...

Dear Amy: I am an American man living in China with my two sons. I left my wife because she was a drug addict. I paid for her to go to a treatment program, but it did not work for her. She died of an overdose. My older son was 3 when his mother died; his younger brother was two. Neither boy seems...

“Race is the third rail, I get it,” said Ron Stodghill, an associate professor at the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism, when referring to National Geographic’s April 2018 issue on the subject of race. “I feel (that) within this push to create content that is a little edgy and also...

My son, now halfway through his eighth-grade year, does not appear to have the slightest whiff of a care about social media, and until about two weeks ago I did not realize the severity of this problem. Newly 14, my son is attached to his phone on a seemingly molecular level, but he has no Facebook...

Blue Sky

Apple will make an education-focused announcement in Chicago March 27 at Lane Tech High School. The iPhone maker typically holds its product announcements in California, at its campus in Cupertino, or at nearby convention centers, making this an unusual event. Its last education-related event took...

Y Combinator is a force to be reckoned with in the startup world. Its funded companies include heavyweights like Dropbox, Reddit, Airbnb, Instacart, and others you use on a regular basis. Last month, news broke that Dropbox is planning an IPO later this year — the first for a YC-backed company....

He was supposed to revolutionize a California fast food kitchen, churning out 150 burgers per hour without requiring a paycheck or benefits. But after a single day of working as a cook at a Caliburger location in Pasadena this week, Flippy the burger-flipping robot has stopped flipping. In some...

Join us as Blue Sky Innovation hosts the latest event in its networking series, Blue Sky Social, presented by Gentleman Jack. This event will take place April 5 at Highline Bar + Lounge in River North. Meet creative Chicagoans who share your entrepreneurial spirit and passion for new ideas — the...

RedEye

St. Patrick’s Day is an opportunity for Irish (and really any) Chicagoans to celebrate, but the holiday also recognizes the discrimination many from the Emerald Isle experienced as marginalized immigrants. Although LGBTQ communities have been left out of the festivities in the past — New York City...

Illinois universities were almost shut out of the NCAA March Madness tournament this year. Power-conference teams like Illinois, Northwestern and DePaul all missed the big dance, while smaller state schools couldn’t sneak their way in. The one exception? Loyola University Chicago. Yes, it’s the...

Autos

Q: Recently in helping my elderly father-in-law start his Lincoln, I came upon a quandary. When jump-starting a vehicle, I know that decades ago it used to be useful to run the rpm up in the vehicle providing the jump, thereby providing a higher voltage from the generator. In modern vehicles with...

Ford, with a sagging U.S. market share and one of the oldest vehicle lineups in the industry, is promising to revamp three-quarters of its models in the next two years. Much of the emphasis will be on refreshing or revamping the entire lineup of SUVs while adding gas-electric hybrid powertrains,...

Most read stories this hour

Documents show some officials were so concerned about the mental stability of the student accused of last month's Florida high school rampage that they decided he should be forcibly committed. But the recommendation was never acted upon. Cruz is accused of the shooting rampage that killed 14 students...

Mitch Trubisky is the sun in the Bears’ solar system. General manager Ryan Pace made that perfectly clear Jan. 1 when he openly challenged himself to surround the franchise quarterback with talent. Trubisky then watched Pace hire Matt Nagy, a former Arena League quarterback, to be the head coach....

I called WKGN-AM midday host Cody McClure — the Knoxville, Tenn., sports-talker who tweeted a four-letter insult at Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt — hoping for the best but expecting the worst. I wanted to at least give a so-called professional a chance to defend an outburst I considered unprofessional,...

When the Obama Presidential Center opens in about three years, visitors can get to it by car, Metra, bike or bus, but not by that most iconic form of Chicago transportation — the “L.” That’s because a Green Line branch that would have led right to the center was torn down in 1997, after some community...

It ended the way these stories tend to in March, with the wonderment wilting too soon after it sprouts. The thrill of Maryland Baltimore County — a basketball team that forced an edit of the list of greatest upsets ever — was fleeting. The most delightful things rarely last long enough. The first...

Only a few weeks ago, Dan McNeil was talking trade-ins rather than trades. While he enjoyed selling cars – or at least trying to – it clearly was not his forte. “It would have taken me a long time to get good at that. It’s not something that happens overnight,” said McNeil, who last week began...

The Rev. C. Frank Phillips, founder of a religious order of men and pastor at the storied St. John Cantius Catholic Parish, was removed last week by the Archdiocese of Chicago amid an investigation into allegations of improper conduct with adult men, according to church officials. In a statement...

I spent the first two decades of my career as a social scientist studying liars and their lies. I thought I had developed a sense of what to expect from them. Then along came President Donald Trump. His lies are both more frequent and more malicious than ordinary people's. In research beginning...

On a recent evening, state Rep. Dan Burke stood in the sun-kissed living room of Mary Anne Turner’s brick bungalow on South Mulligan Street and listened for 19 minutes as the longtime resident described a rat infestation on her block. For the first time, she won’t be planting peppers and tomatoes...

After a few committed months of hot yoga at a studio in New York, Christina Rice had found her niche. So when the studio announced that it was offering teacher training, she signed right up. It was only when she arrived with her mat that she noticed something striking. There were 54 other women...

The one person who may be feeling the most pressure after the special election in Pennsylvania isn’t Paul Ryan or Mitch McConnell. Sure, they’re both in danger of losing their respective majority statuses in November’s midterm elections, but they already knew that. Nor does anything change for...

It was looking, on Sunday’s “The Walking Dead,” as though the Saviors were heading for a showdown with the Hilltop, the warriors against the farmers, a No. 1 seed against a No. 16, or at least a 5 versus an 11. Their knives were dipped in zombie guts, per Savior leader Negan’s scheme that seemed...

Like Chicago’s downtown on St. Patrick’s Day weekend, a river of green has flowed through TV sets ahead of Tuesday’s primary vote, as governor candidates have spent tens of millions of dollars on advertising during the long campaign. The frenzied final weekend of in-person campaigning supplements...

And here we are again, back to the same question: What to do about Louis Farrakhan? The leader of the Nation of Islam has, for years, been a toxic fount of anti-Semitic and homophobic rhetoric. “These false Jews,” he preached in 2006, “promote the filth of Hollywood that is seeding the American...

Clip and save: Kyle Schwarber will be the Cubs’ leadoff hitter. I don’t know if he’ll be at the top of the order on opening day in Miami a week from Thursday, but you watch, he’ll be there and he’ll be there quickly, and I think this year he’ll be there with better results. I don’t have inside...

As the biggest news organization in Chicago and the Midwest, the Chicago Tribune wants to inform our readers and encourage them to push an agenda for a more vital community. The most direct way they do that is in choosing who will lead their governments. Our readers make up their own minds when...

Michael Ferro is retiring from the board of Tronc ahead of the newspaper chain’s $500 million sale of the Los Angeles Times and other California assets. Ferro’s retirement is effective immediately, the company said. Justin Dearborn, chief executive officer of Tronc, was named to succeed Ferro as...

In a series of tweets March 17 and 18, President Donald Trump made a number of inaccurate or misleading statements about the investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. As a reader service, here's a quick guide to his claims. "As the House Intelligence Committee has...

Texas' capital city was rocked by the fourth bombing this month, which injured two people and which the police chief says was caused by a tripwire and showed "a different level of skill" than the package bombs used in the three prior attacks. Police Chief Brian Manley also told ABC's "Good Morning...

When I began teaching, I taught second grade. Pokemon cards were popular then, and children often brought them to school to trade at recess. One day, a boy kept playing with his cards during class time. After two warnings, I told him that I was going to hold his Pokemon cards until the end of the...

Hikers found the body of a man Sunday outside Mundelein in a totaled car, the same make and model as that of a Round Lake Park man reported missing two weeks ago. The identity of the man had yet to be released as of Sunday evening by the Lake County Coroner's Office, but the vehicle description...

Loyola guard Marques Townes has passed out flyers with teammates in campus dorms, encouraging his fellow students to come watch them play. Coach Porter Moser has spoken at freshman orientations throughout his seven seasons, hoping to make an impression that turns new students into fans. Moser and...

After two rounds, four days, 48 games and one Sister Jean, here are the NCAA tournament's winners and losers so far. Winner: Sister Jean Our local treasure has become a national star. Bless her heart. Loser: Thomas Jefferson The third U.S. president and principal author of the Declaration of Independence...

The Cubs likely will finalize their 25-man roster before their Cactus League finale on Sunday against the Kansas City Royals at Surprise. In addition to performance, there are a few procedural issues among the relievers for the team to consider. First, Eddie Butler is out of options and would be...

Dear Amy: During the holidays, my fiance and I attended a party. Throughout the course of the evening a friend's husband was overly flirty with me, and during the typical polite hug goodbye, he grabbed my chin and planted a kiss square on my lips. I shoved him away, gave him a few choice words...